Charm City by Laura Lippman Page A

with ink. Resignedly, he tossed the crumpled sheets into a nearby
trash can, wiped his palms on his pilled trousers, and sat down at his
computer.
    "We've got you all set
up on our system. To sign on, you hit this button and type in
MONAGHAN," he said, doing just that. Even his typing had a
jumpy, paranoid rhythm, as if he expected someone to creep up behind
him and find fault in whatever he did. "Now the computer
wants a six-letter password. You want me to pick something out for you?
It's not as if you'll need a secret one."
    "That's okay,
I'll do it." Tess slid the keyboard away from
Hailey and tapped in the first six-letter word that came to mind:
E-S-S-K-A-Y, which showed up on the computer only as a series of
asterisks. Who knew what secrets she might want to keep as this
progressed? "Now what?"
    "Well, I assume you're
going to start interviewing people. I drew up a list of people we know
were here that night. Editors, reporters, custodial staff, the printer
who set the bogus—um, unofficial—story. You should
be able to get to most of them today, except for Feeney and Ruiz. They
flew to Georgia yesterday, aren't expected back until late
tonight."
    "Georgia? For the Wink
story?"
    "I guess so, but no
one's informed me officially." Hailey allowed
himself a small, bitter smile. "This is so hot only Colleen,
Mabry, and Sterling are in the loop. I guess I'll find out
when the Sunday paper comes out, like everyone else in
Baltimore."
    "Don't be so bitter,
Marv. They haven't clued me in, either, and I'm the
sports editor. The story came out of my department, don't
forget that." A grinning, square-jawed man appeared out of
the warren of desks and cubicles to offer his arm to Tess, which she
declined to take. "Guy Whitman. I'm here to lead
you to the system manager, who will explain what happened
electronically Tuesday night. The computers are part of my
province."
    "What do computers have to do with
the sports department?" Tess asked, as she began following
him along a new path through the newsroom labyrinth.
    "I'm also in charge of Beacon-Light 2000, a task force set up to examine the paper's information
services, what we'll need to go into the twenty-first
century."
    "Aren't newspapers
already in the information services business?"
    Guy looked as if he wanted to pat her on the
head. He was handsome, in a fluffy-hair kind of way rare in a newspaper
editor. And didn't he know it .
Too bad his taste in ties appeared to be terminally whimsical. Tess
tried not to make a sour face at the dancing lacrosse sticks.
    "You sound like everyone else
around here, Theresa. Haven't you noticed the times, they are
a-changing? You can read virtually every major metropolitan newspaper
on the World Wide Web. The Washington Post has its own on-line service. But the Beacon-Light ,
one of the last family-owned papers in the country, has only started
beta-testing its Web site, and they're doing it on the cheap.
They think they can continue to work primarily in paper." He
spat out the last word as if it were something caught in his teeth.
    "Well, paper is awfully handy for
taking on a bus, or sharing at the breakfast table. By the way, my
grandmother on my mother's side is the only person who gets
away with calling me Theresa."
    "I hope you're not one
of those types who's still hot for hot type,
Theresa." Whitman didn't seem to be deliberately
ignoring her, he had just lost the habit of listening to any voice
other than his own. "Dreaming of pneumatic
tubes—don't tell me that's not Freudian.
But things do change, and usually for the better, I think, although
that's not always a popular opinion these days. Do you think
football should be played in leather helmets? Should we use carrier
pigeons to cover breaking events? Would you have preferred to come here
today via streetcar? You're young, you're suppose
to embrace the future, while old farts like
myself—" he paused here, in case she wanted to
object to his characterization of himself. "Anyway,